Walter Landor (born
on July 9, 1913, in Munich, Germany; died June 9, 1995, in Tiburon, CA), an industrial designer and visionary pioneer
in branding, created some of the world’s most recognizable packages, brands,
and trademarks. Born in Munich, he grew up around contemporary artists
and designers. His professional development began with his father, an
architect, and continued with his formal education in Great Britain. In 1939 Landor
came to the United States to work on the British Pavilion at the New York
World’s Fair. In 1941, he started his company Walter Landor and Associates
(later Landor Associates) in San Francisco with his wife Josephine Martinelli. He
was able to inspire and organize his staff of creative associates to create enduring
and memorable designs and cultivate lasting relationships with his clients. Landor
re-introduced contemporary retail packaging and design in the United States,
leading the consumer boom of the post-World War II era. His first clients were
local companies in the San Francisco Bay area such as wineries and breweries,
but the list rapidly expanded. In 1962, Landor bought a retired ferryboat, the Klamath. It became his company’s
headquarters and included offices, studios, a mock supermarket, and the Museum
of Packaging Antiquities. The unique setting at Pier 5 on the waterfront
attracted new national and international clients from a variety of different
businesses and industries, including banking and finance, retail consumer
goods, and commercial aviation.

Walter Landor, the
son of Fritz and Elsie Landauer, was born Walter Fritz Joseph Landauer in the
Schwabing section of Munich on July 9, 1913. His paternal grandfather, Joseph,
was a textile industrialist in Augsburg. His father became a prominent
architect who designed the synagogues in Augsburg and Plauen. While the
synagogue in Augsburg can be described as traditional, the synagogue in Plauen
had a non-traditional, cube-like exterior that followed the contemporary
Bauhaus style.[1]

Landor grew up around
art and artists in comfortable surroundings. His parents entertained frequently
and hosted dinner parties with friends and associates from a variety of
businesses and professions. The family enjoyed the arts with regular visits to
the cultural institutions of Munich. Sunday family trips were often to the
English Garden, art museums, sometimes to an avant-garde art gallery or to the
surrounding areas of the countryside. Walter’s uncle Richard, a book publisher in
Berlin, regularly sent Walter and his older sister Gertrude art books and
design magazines that contained some of the latest Werkbund and Bauhaus
publications.[2]

Although the
Landauers were Jewish, they did not practice their religion. Walter felt that
his family provided a strong moral foundation that was often supplemented by
attending local lectures on subjects such as ethics and moral philosophy. They
provided Walter, a quick learner, with an open mind to listening to differing
opinions and to discussing different points of view.[3]

During his
formative years, Walter spent most of his after-school time at his father’s
office and studio, where he developed an interest in architecture and design. However,
when it came time for him to learn architectural drafting, he realized that he “had
absolutely no talent for it. I decided that I would concentrate on designing
everyday products that would make life more pleasant and more beautiful and
appeal to the mass audience.”[4] Landor turned to the study of industrial design,
where he took advantage of “the privilege [of] being brought up in an
environment where the ideas of the Werkbund and the Bauhaus” schools of
industrial design were very influential.[5]

The Werkbund
movement started in Germany in 1907 and set the stage for the academic training
and development of professional designers. Supporters of the movement set out
to establish the improvement of production for the manufacturer and to increase
sales to the consumer in a mass-market-based economy. Through the Werkbund’s
mantra “form follows function,” specific objects were designed to make their
production easier and their utilitarianism apparent to the consumer.[6]

The Bauhaus school
of design in post-World War I Germany followed the mission of the Werkbund
movement to foster professional design and to work with manufacturing and
industry by recruiting and developing the best talent in design, crafts, and
engineering to reunite art and industrial design.[7]
The Bauhaus school had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in
art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and
typography.

For Landor, it
became apparent that he “wanted to create a more aesthetically beautiful
environment, to increase the everyday enjoyment of life through design.”[8]
He saw the potential and power of how design could affect the emotions of
people and decided to focus his career on designing for the mass audience.

In 1932, Walter
Landor went to Great Britain for six months as an exchange student to study art
and improve his English. He interned at the W.S. Crawford, Ltd advertising
agency in the copywriting and marketing departments. He appreciated his time at
the ad agency, particularly in the art department, but it left him unsatisfied
as to how the design of everyday objects connected with consumers. The six
months in England passed quickly and as he prepared for his return trip home,
he noticed a change in his own attitude about himself and his life back in
Germany. He decided that he wanted to become English and “wipe out [his] German
background – or at least the negative part of it.” He also noticed that his
English improved and his “accent had become more British than British” and planned
to return to England as soon as possible: “I had seen my future and it was not
Germany.”[9]

After working at
his uncle’s textile mill in Augsburg, learning business accounting and dealing
with salesmen and union workers, Landor returned to Great Britain, this time to
continue with his formal education. He enrolled at the Goldsmith College of Art
in London, where he studied under Milner Gray, a well-known designer in
Britain. Shortly after graduation, Landor was offered a job at the Bassett-Gray advertising and
marketing company, where he was
assigned to design packages using different plastics as the primary materials.[10]
In 1935, Misha Black, a specialist in exhibit design, joined the company and together
Gray, Black, Landor, and two others formed their own company, International
Design Partnership (IDP). Each partner came to the firm from a different field
of expertise in design and they were noted for their remarkable ability to work
in collaboration with one another.[11] A year later, at the age
of twenty-three, Landor became the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of
Industrial Artists, a title that recognized his expertise in the new field of
industrial design in Great Britain. He consequently changed his name to Landor.[12]
He had found success in Britain along with recognition and professional
accolades, and he found a new identity.

Foreseeing
that leading events on the world stage would escalate to levels of great uncertainty,
the IDP partnership decided to take a pro-active approach if Great Britain was indeed
dragged into war. In late 1938, Gray and Black used their connections to land a
contract for designing a section of the British Pavilion at the New York
World’s Fair. In the spring of 1939, Landor came to America to help install the
IDP section of the British Pavilion. While at the World’s Fair, he met two
well-known American industrial designers, Richard Loewy and Henry Dreyfus.[13] He
also met with the designers from General Electric’s Plastics Division to discuss
the role of industrial design and GE’s use of plastics in industrial design.[14]

With war rising in
Europe, Landor decided with his partners’ approval to take some time away from
the World’s Fair to travel across the country. His wanted to meet professional
industrial designers and learn about business opportunities from his
contemporaries in the United States. He also wanted to see for himself “how
American industrial designers had succeeded so miraculously, so dramatically,
more than we had in London.”[15]

Throughout the
Great Depression of the 1930s, the role of industrial designers grew more
important. By creating or adding style to manufactured products, they made it
attractive for the manufacturers and retailers to continue selling their goods
and products.[16] The success of General
Motors throughout the Depression was based on its regularly scheduled changes
in the designs of its automobiles. While GM flourished (along with several
other manufacturers of consumer goods), the Ford Motor Company lost its hold as
the number one automobile manufacturer during these years. From 1927 to 1937,
GM earned a profit every year, while Ford introduced only one new automobile,
the Model A, and lost about $200 million during the same period.[17]
American consumers became accustomed to the introduction of annual design
changes of models and styles in the automotive industry.[18]
Using more instinct or “gut reaction” than philosophy or theory, industrial
designers in the Unites States reasoned that “[i]f products looked better, they
would sell better.” In doing so, the designers, “have been credited with making
a major contribution to getting the American economy moving,” by appealing to
the American consumers to buy and buy again.[19]

Following the Great
Depression, industrial designers in the United States began to examine the
relationship between the manufacturing processes to create an object and the
desire to sell a better product. Designers such as Loewy and Dreyfus began to
work alongside engineers and factory workers at the manufacturing plant to make
products that would work better—not just look better.

Traveling across
the country and interviewing industrial designers along the way, Landor eventually
made his way to Los Angeles in hopes of finding a job with a design firm. He
was unsuccessful. Upon hearing that San Francisco possibly had opportunities
for professional industrial designers, he decided to travel up the coast to investigate
his prospects there.[20] While San Francisco was
not an industrial city, he realized that there were some food processing
companies—and that would mean packaging.

After
arriving in San Francisco in November of 1939, Landor quickly realized that
“this is the time, this is the place.”[21]
He was introduced to Glen Wessels of the California College of Arts and Crafts
in Oakland. Wessels offered him a job teaching product design and industrial
design in the new Industrial Design department.[22] Landor
started in January 1940. There in the first class, sitting in the front row,
was Josephine “Jo” Martinelli (born September 12, 1918 in Madera, CA). The two
fell in love and soon married. In 1941, Walter and Jo established Walter Landor
& Associates (WL&A) in a small flat in the Russian Hill area of San Francisco,
with Jo as “the associates.” Landor
remembered his instant fascination with San Francisco: “For me it was a city
that looked on the whole world, a city built on the cultural traditions of East
and West ... how could I live anywhere else?”[23]

Walter
became a U.S. citizen in December 1943. By that time, his parents had
immigrated to England and relocated to Welwyn, near London. His father found
work designing small-scale projects on a few retail storefronts and eventually
started a small business designing cemetery monuments. His mother Elsie taught
French and German to schoolchildren in the London area.[24]

Landor’s first
contracts as an industrial designer came from local projects based in San Francisco.
Walter and Jo collaborated on interior designs for Joseph Magnin department
stores, the Pony Lounge in the Hotel Don, and Lester’s Market supermarket.[25]
But it was the shortage of metal during World War II that forced the
manufacturers of canned fruits and vegetables to switch to glass containers and
this provided Landor with his first client: S&W Foods of San Francisco.
Landor’s design also needed to be functional for the new and rapidly growing
phenomenon of self-service supermarkets. His innovative design placed the brand
name at a consistent location on all S&W products, which made it easier for
the customer to read, and there was a blank area on either the label or the lid
for the grocer to mark the price.[26]

In 1945 Walter and
Jo Landor relocated their office and studios to 556 Commercial Street, an area
near the Chinatown district of San Francisco. Several freelance art studios
were already in the area and many artists were veterans who had returned from
the war and were embarking on creative careers. When potential clients came to
visit his office, Landor would introduce these freelance artists as if they
were his associates to make the operations of WL&A seem larger than they
were. If he landed a contract, he would offer contracts to some of the
freelance talent to help with the work.[27]

It was during this
time that WL&A expanded with new artists and illustrators who would become
core members of the firm. While teaching at the San Francisco School of Fine
Arts, Landor met Rodney McKnew, a student and free-lance artist, who soon came
on board as an associate. Freelance graphic illustrators Francis Mair and
Lillian Sader, who both had relocated from Chicago, also joined WL&A as
associates. In a business with frequent staff changes and high turnover rates,
Landor was able to successfully recognize and assemble talent, then bind it to
the company long-term. McKnew, Mair, and Sader remained with WL&A for over
forty years as design associates and later as senior staff.[28]

By the late 1940s,
Walter and Jo were looking to expand their business geographically beyond San
Francisco. They headed north up the Pacific Coast to Seattle to meet the owner
of the Seattle Brewing and Malting Company. Fritz Sick and
his son Emil had purchased the brewery in 1935; by 1948, Emil Sick had taken
over the family business and decided that it was time to update and modernize
the look of the product. The existing label prominently used the number “6”
(“six” rhymes with Sicks’). However, the label appeared old and was not selling
in the new self-service stores. Sicks’ Select became Walter Landor’s first
label design outside the San Francisco Bay area. This was his opportunity to
rejuvenate the label and at the same time demonstrate that the new design would
increase sales by making the packaging more distinctive and attractive.

The redesign for
Sicks’ Select went beyond just the typical placement of labels and brand names
on bottles and cans. Landor expanded the project by placing two primary design
elements of the Sicks’ Select brand onto larger packaging components, such as
the cardboard box shipping containers, and smaller components, such as bottle
tops. He explained how “shipping cases were re-designed to become forceful
advertising mediums at no extra printing cost. Eye-compelling when stacked,
they maintain that high quality look of the foil label, in spite of the
printing limitations applying to shipping cases.”[29]
For Landor, every surface should communicate the message of the brewer. As the American
Brewer reported in 1949, it was “Landor’s contention that ‘every inch
counts in modern merchandising’ is borne out by the manner in which the [every]
area … succeeds in making the consumer feel that real care and perfection has
gone into this particular bottle of beer.”[30]
The design needs to communicate “something of importance to people . . . or it
fails utterly to leave an imprint . . . and a future sale has been lost.”[31]

The design of
Sicks’ Select drew attention and recognition from other brewers. In the beer
label competition at the Small Brewers Association (SBA) annual conference in
1948, the design for Sicks’ Select won first prize. Landor’s success in the SBA
beer label competitions continued for the next several years as he earned at
least one major design award every year.

The redesign of the
labels and packaging for Sicks’ Select launched Walter Landor’s career into
designing labels and packaging for breweries. No longer only a local designer
in San Francisco, he had successfully expanded his business to the Pacific
Northwest. These labels earned Landor his earliest awards for design and that
opened doors to new clients in a growing market across the country through most
of the 1950s.

Landor was aware
that individually packaged goods had developed as an important component in
advertising and marketing. To Walter, the design of the package for a product
needed to identify an old favorite or entice the consumer to a new or improved
product and “the package itself must do the talking.”[32]
The package also provided a sense of quality from the manufacturer which, to
Landor, was no less a promise or a commitment to the consumer for the price of
the product in the package.[33]

Landor continued to
experiment with new materials and tried printing on foil for packaging. In
1950, the Bonner Packing Co. was one of California's oldest processors of dried
fruit. Landor introduced full color photographic printing on foil to display
the fruit as naturally and as “eye-catchingly” as possible. The foil wrapper
also served as added protection against spoilage. The executives at Bonner’s
were so pleased with the new packaging that they allowed Landor to put his
signature along the edge of the package label.[34]

Landor’s innovations
in bottle designs, packaging, and labels for wineries often caused spectacular
increases in sales for these new clients. Petri Wines, the number one winery in
California during the late 1940s, had been selling its table wines in
non-descript gallon jugs. Landor redesigned the bottles and labels for the
entire line of Petri Signature wines. In addition, he presented an
attractive prototype of the gallon bottle and labels for the whole winery.[35]
Landor also produced several new designs for Mission Bell Wineries of
California. His team of designers created new labels for their stock bottles
and introduced a new design for their half-gallon, quart, and fifth bottles,
keeping the image of the architectural styles of the old missions and the old
bell. The managers at Mission Bell were pleased with the success of the new
designs, although it caused problems for some retailers who complained that
they were stuck with old inventories as “wine in the new packages far outsold
other wine in the older containers.”[36]

During this time, Landor began to expand his business
beyond the West Coast and set his sights on the breweries in the Midwest. The
Gettelman Brewing Company of Milwaukee presented Landor with a commendation
after he redesigned the Gettelman’s label in 1950. By the fall of the year,
Thomas R. Gettelman, vice president, boasted that “[o]ur bottle sales in
October, 1950, against October, 1949, showed an increase of 58 per cent.”[37]
The Gettelman’s label also won first place at the 1952 Brewers’ Association of
America competition.

In 1951, Landor
moved his company from 556 Commercial Street to larger spaces at 143 Bush
Street. Don Short, a freelance artist who did occasional work for WL&A,
joined the firm in 1951 as studio director. He installed an in-house
photography studio to shoot food products and other still-lives.[38]
Photographic realism serves as a key design element to create a tempting
appearance on the package for a food product. A color photograph of a slice of
cake on the box of a cake mix introduces the flavor or taste of the cake. Design
elements for frozen foods packages and labels on canned fruits and vegetables
also include photographs to depict serving suggestions for these products.[39]
Integrating in-house control over the design process, Landor and his designers
used the studio to develop the packaging labels for Bel-Air, the house brand of
Safeway frozen foods. As the first of many designs for Bel-Air, the designers employed
photographs of vegetables and designed an abstract outline of a leaf as the
background for the name Bel-Air. Safeway used this basic graphic for their
Bel-Air products until the 1990s.[40]

In the early 1950s,
Landor began taking prototypes of his packaging and label designs into
supermarkets to solicit responses from shoppers. He would get permission from
the store manager to conduct surveys, then put his designs on the shelves and
move things around. He would select random shoppers and ask them which package
they liked while an assistant would record which designs they selected. However,
all too often a crowd would gather around Walter and the store manager would
come and ask him to leave. The one supermarket that allowed Landor to pre-test
his designs in the store was Safeway, because “we did so much Safeway product
that they would set it up through the management, so they had to accommodate
us.”[41]
Except for some well-established East Coast designers who hired advertising
consultants for their national brand clients, local printers did most retail
packaging. Landor’s presence in San Francisco stores moved in step with
like-minded colleagues as they pre-tested their designs. Thanks to his method of
interacting directly with customers to document their feedback, and then leave armed
with their comments, he was able report to his corporate clients that the final
design would indeed be successful in the marketplace.

For Landor no two
projects were alike; there was no cookie-cutter approach or designer’s
signature style at WL&A. Each client received the same amount of
consideration—for Landor it was the expectation to produce the best design for
a client that represented the product and the company. His researchers traced
the visual history of the graphics, images, and advertisements as he reviewed
the visual elements of a product, company, or brand. In the end, the final
design would identify and unify the image with the consumer. For Walter it was
not enough to create an artistically pleasing design; the design needed to
capture the character and personality of the product, company, or brand.[42]

1952 was an important
year in Walter Landor’s career. He had won several awards over the previous
three years from the Small Brewers Association and was then invited to deliver
the keynote address at their annual meeting in Chicago on October 13, 1952. In
his presentation, “Gentlemen, Your Label is Showing. Is It Selling Beer for
You?” he emphasized that the design of an appropriate label is necessary for
sales and brand recognition. Landor then outlined the steps for the design of a
successful beer label. With top management of many breweries at the association
meeting, his speech opened the doors for new clients, especially to the brewers
in the Midwest markets of Milwaukee and St. Louis and eastward to the breweries
in New York.[43]

Also in 1952,
Landor became a founding member of the newly formed Packaging Designers’
Council (PDC), a professional association for industrial designers that
specialized in designing packages. At a time when most industrial design
companies were headquartered in New York or Chicago, Landor’s membership in the
PDC enabled him to advertise his services nationally—primarily as an underdog
firm. Later in articles and press releases, Landor claimed that he was the only
industrial designer in the West.[44]
Whether it was true or not, with each new project he began to chip away at the
monolithic domination of the design firms in the East. Two years later Landor
declared with a bit of bravado in a press release: “New York’s title as the top
design city in the nation is being challenged by San Francisco. Landor has been
bringing a fresh western approach and new imagination to the field of design.”[45]

In 1954, Landor won design awards from the Package Designers’ Council for Lone Star Brewing of San
Antonio, Texas. They presented him with the category of “Best Coordinated
Packaging” for the designs of labels, cans, bottles, crowns, six-packs,
shipping cases, trucks, and drivers' uniforms. At the Brewers' Association of
America, he won eight out of nine awards for brewers in six different states. He
also won the grand prize award for design for the fifth consecutive year.[46]

In 1955, the owners
of Stitzel-Weller of Louisville, KY, wanted to develop a holiday season
promotional decanter for their Old Fitzgerald bourbon. Landor required his team
to go beyond creating just a simple decanter. The final design for the
candlelight decanter was selected from among fifty alternative designs. The new
decanter gained in popularity not only because of its contemporary look but
also because of its innovative “after-use” at home. After the decanter was
empty, the bottle and accessories functioned as candleholders.[47]

Walter Landor and
his team faced a design challenge of a different sort when the leader in
bottled water for commercial venues, Arrowhead & Puritas of Los Angeles,
wanted to introduce half-gallon glass bottles to the home and restaurant
market. Glass containers of this size were unwieldy and heavy, particularly
when filled, making them awkward for people seated at a table to lift. The
bottle’s design had to overcome this difficulty.[48]
WL&A designers studied in depth how the product worked, how it was made,
and how the consumer used it. The “tilt bottle” Landor developed had two flat surfaces
and did not have to be lifted to refill an empty glass, nor did it require a
handle to be passed from person to person. The bottle’s curves resembled the
shape of early nineteenth-century glass flasks, and its rocking motion made the
container easy to use. The design’s main advantage, Walter stressed, was that
“the user—by tilting the bottle—[could] pour without lifting.”[49] Walter’s team created an
elegant and practical decanter for storing and serving bottled water.

In 1956, with the
increase in the number of clients as well as staff members, WL&A needed a
larger space for offices and studios and Landor moved his company to a
waterfront building at Pier 5. The expanded office space included offices and
meeting rooms for newly formed research groups and he installed “a mock retail
environment to help designers and clients visualize the new packages in the
real-life context of grocery shelves.”[50]
From an inconspicuous location, the researchers could watch the shoppers as
they passed through the aisles with their shopping carts and then, in groups or
individually, ask them about the packages for the products they did or didn’t put
into their carts during their shopping experience. Landor used this method of
consumer research and interview feedback extensively for testing the designs of
his packages.

For the rest of the
decade, WL&A’s main sources of business were breweries and wineries. California
breweries Regal Amber Brewing Co. and Lucky Lager and local wineries Old Guild
Wines and Paul Masson signed on as clients. Sapporo Brewery of Japan became
Landor’s first client in Asia and provided a foothold there for future
expansion throughout the Pacific Rim. Landor’s Sapporo label highlighted the
American influence on marketing Japanese products after World War II.

“I think that in
our organization, we wanted simplicity, elegance, quality and longevity – these
were the prime philosophies of Walter.”[51]

The 1960s opened as
a time of both growth and transition for Landor. While the business expanded
with clients across the nation and overseas, WL&A’s services also expanded
beyond labels and packaging. More and more companies, mostly West Coast or
repeat clients, turned to the designers at Landor. Landor’s team began to
create new corporate images for large conglomerates and continued with
traditional mass marketing and advertising for the banking and finance sectors,
retail consumer goods, and commercial aviation.

For example, Landor
revived the historic and well-known image of the Wells Fargo stagecoach and the
Old West and placed it within the framework of a contemporary styled diamond.
The new graphic symbol for Wells Fargo became widely recognizable when revealed
in a marketing survey, which showed that “72 percent of Californians in Wells
Fargo’s target areas can identify it, without any lettering.”[52]

In
terms of consumer goods, he introduced a new presentation of Hills Bros Coffee’s
three-pound coffee can. For over thirty years, they had packed and sold their coffee
in cans with a label of an Arabian holding a steaming cup of coffee. Now their
design included a selection of wood-cut illustrations and Ansel Adams
photographs of the Western wilderness. Over a span of five years, Landor
introduced a series of seven decorated coffee cans.[53]
For Phillip
Morris, Landor designed new packaging and labels for the Commander, Benson
& Hedges, and Alpine brands of cigarettes. Benson & Hedges subsequently
became one of Philip Morris’ most popular brands. The well-known image of the
spoon and the rooster on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes cereal box also harkens back to
Walter Landor & Associates.”[54]

Once again looking
for new office space in the early 1960s, Landor’s real estate advisor suggested
acquiring the Klamath, a retired
ferry boat that was moored across the bay. Landor paid $20,000 at a bankruptcy
sale in 1962 ($144,000 in 2010 USD) and the renovations cost roughly $220,000 (about
$1.6 million in 2010 USD).[55]
The architect gutted the interior of the boat and installed two levels of
office space and an outdoor deck. With 22,000 square feet of office space, the Klamath was large enough to hold four
design sections, a larger research area for focus groups, an improved
supermarket setting, an expanded photo studio, and a slide library to organize
their visual records.[56]
The renovations required building and installing partitions, drop ceilings,
heating, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical connections, telephones, and
intercoms, as well as “a good supply of Dramamine anti-sea-sickness pills for
the staff.” Windows around all three decks and skylights above provided natural
lighting around the boat and from the top deck.[57]
The ship’s bell was rung every time a new project had landed.[58]

A new space specifically
built for that purpose displayed Landor’s collection of advertising objects and
memorabilia. Named the Museum of Antique Packaging, it showcased an informal
collection of packaging from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
that represented nostalgic views of some well-known products as well as some
obscure products that no longer existed. The displays on the museum shelves
served both as a reminder of past products and designs for Landor’s associates
to consult and as a unique attraction to entertain his clients.[59]
As a visual link to the past, the collection would also document the gradual
changes in design over time.

In short, the Klamath provided the backdrop of a new
and exciting place for Landor’s employees, customers, and prospective clients.[60]
Docked at Pier 5 along the Embarcadero, the Klamath looked upon the San
Francisco skyline, the Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Being on a boat was a
unique experience in which “the rise and fall of the horizon reminds you that
you’re on water. The motion is accented by chain suspended lamps that swing to
and fro.”[61] Away from the downtown
city and traffic noise, the Klamath provided an idyllic setting for
creativity and imagination where “only the sea gulls can interrupt the
meeting.”[62] As Walter Landor
recalled, the setting of the Klamath along the harbor allowed the team
of designers to think and daydream. Obviously, it was the perfect setting for
his creative staff.[63]

During the twenty
years on the Klamath, Landor’s company expanded continuously and its
list of clients rapidly grew larger. The size and scope of projects for Landor
also grew beyond packaging and labels for products on supermarket shelves. Clients
came to San Francisco to see what was different about the unique office on a
ferryboat. They wanted to experience the unconventional atmosphere of a design
company that produced such creative and financially rewarding results.

Among the
industries that sought out Landor’s services while aboard the Klamath were financial institutions that
needed new corporate symbols, airlines that wanted new graphics on their
aircrafts, and manufacturers of traditional consumer goods that wished to update
their products and businesses.

Consumer surveys
conducted by Landor’s research staff discovered that individuals viewed Bank of
America, the largest bank in the United States, as impersonal and oriented
primarily toward large corporate accounts. Landor developed the BA monogram to
communicate “something quite wonderful and strange happening between [the two
letters]. The majority of the people see a bird. It was conceived as ... a
non-threatening symbol more like an old-time monogram. It’s a very personal
statement.” The new logo helped Bank of America present a friendlier face to
their customers.[64]

When the national
airline of Italy, Alitalia, was interested in a corporate image, interviews
conducted by Landor with air travelers revealed that they thought Alitalia was
a small domestic airline. The technical challenge of the fresh design was that
the graphics needed to be applied to a variety of aircrafts, such as 747's and
DC-10's, as well as the flight uniforms, interiors, tickets, and printed
materials. Using the national colors of Italy, Landor completed his first
graphics and markings program for a major airline in 1969.[65]
He was also hired by executives at Thai International, who sought to develop a
graphical image for the national airline without incorporating a symbol that
could be mistaken as a religious element in Buddhism. After months of research,
an abstract symbol using color and patterns reached out to international
travelers. While the colors and pattern of the image depict an exotic
destination, it also represented Thailand and not the neighboring countries.[66]
George McLean, who worked on the project, remembered that “[this symbol]
implies a considerable sensitivity and involvement in the culture of the
country.”[67]

Landor also did work
for domestic carriers. Despite being the sixth largest carrier in the United
States in 1975, passengers and employees thought of Allegheny Airlines as a
regional and conservative company. In working with Landor, Allegheny wanted to
retain a certain amount of their image but with a bit of modern
“progressiveness.” Landor’s “colorful ‘flight sweep’ curve design accomplished
these objectives.”[68]
When the Federal government deregulated the U.S. airline industry in the 1980s,
Landor changed the name of Allegheny to USAir. The new corporate image of the
airline boosted company morale with the name change as USAir repainted all of
their aircraft with Landor’s strong and bold graphics to draw attention to the
new name.[69]

One of the first
designs to mix capital and lowercase letters within a single logo was Landor’s new
garment label for Levi Strauss blue jeans.[70]
The design tandem collaborated to design the distinctive tag that mimicked the
stitch pattern on the hip pocket, creating the lettering and the red shield
separately. When the National Cotton Council was seeking a new logo, Landor developed
the “Seal of Cotton.” But one of Walter Landor’s favorite projects was for the
Miller Brewing Company. When Miller Brewing of Milwaukee bought the Peter Hand
Brewery of Chicago in 1967, the sale included their recipes and brand names. In
the early 1970s, Miller put the low-calorie recipe into production and
introduced a brand new beer: “Lite” by Miller Brewing.[71]
Miller Brewing was already familiar with Landor’s expertise and methods from
the redesigned labels for Miller High Life, Miller Ale, and Miller Malt Liquor.
All of these labels featured the script Miller name with the distinctive scroll
underneath. When Miller Brewing wanted to introduce Lite, as a “low-calorie,
low-carbohydrate” beer, they again went to Landor Associates.[72]
The two companies collaborated to review market research, financial planning,
distribution, advertising, and an aggressive competitive philosophy. For Miller
Brewing, the purpose of the design for Lite was to convince the American male
beer drinker that it was acceptable to order and enjoy a low-calorie beer. The
visual elements for Lite needed to “communicate masculinity and ‘beeriness’ and
give the Lite brand an impressive visual impact.”[73]
The success of Miller Lite was a sensation in the brewing industry. Sales
sky-rocketed and Miller Brewing moved from seventh-largest brewery in 1973 to
second-largest in 1977.[74]
Shortly after Miller introduced Lite, the other national breweries came out
with their own low-calorie beers. However, Miller Lite remained the top-selling
low-calorie, low-carbohydrate beer for nearly two decades.[75]
Landor explained the secret of his design: “It’s a light beer. No, we’re not
saying it design wise, we’re making a rather heavy, bold, Germanic lettering
for the word Lite. It contradicts the spirit of the word, intentionally. We are
saying to people, this is a full-bodied, full-flavored beer.”[76]

During the 1980s,
Landor’s services expanded beyond packaging and product labels to include the
concept of packaging and branding entire companies. International conglomerates
and the makers of the world’s most recognizable soft drink came to Walter
Landor and his experts in search of the right visual symbol, a “corporate
identity” for the whole company.

For instance, Landor
and his associates created the strong, recognizable symbol of the World
Wildlife Fund, a furry black and white ambassador, that is still used today. They
also changed the Western International Hotel Corporation to Westin Hotels and developed
a new visual symbol that consolidated the brand identity throughout the company
for the independently named hotels under the Westin name, so that Westin
affiliates were now able to compete with the prestige of the Hilton or Hyatt
line of hotels for the upscale visitor.[77]

Continuing his work
for airlines, Landor created new aircraft markings and graphics for British
Airways as the company prepared its fleet of 167 aircraft for privatization in
February 1985. Although the use of the gold crest of the Royal family and a
partial Union Jack on the tail section were criticized by some, Landor’s
surveys determined that the response from the flying public was overall positive
and the symbol communicated “an endorsement, a hallmark of quality” to the
consumer.[78] The new design for
British Airways appeared on all “subsonic aircraft, ground equipment, and
paperwork, including baggage tags, tickets, and stationery.”[79]
In 1985, Landor completed the work on the British Airways Concorde Supersonic
Transport (SST). The new Landor design of the Concorde included new exterior
markings as well as redesigned seating and aisles to create a more spacious
interior.[80]

In the
early 1960s, the Coca-Cola Company had begun to expand with new products,
packaging, and containers. By the 1980s, they had formally introduced the “Coke”
name to six products. However, in the mid-1980s, the different graphics on the packaging
looked like competitors rather than a family of products on the supermarket
shelves. Landor’s designers understood the importance of preserving the
historic value of the world-wide recognition of the Coca-Cola signature. The final design modified the script by eliminating the upward stroke in the letter“L”to accommodate the integration of the
upsweep, also in “Coke,” of the new silver and white curve. [81]

In 1994, Landor
Associates changed the name and the visual identity of two companies: Xerox and
Federal Express. By 1994, the Xerox Corporation had grown beyond being just a
copier firm. Xerox had diversified and expanded their line of office products
and services to printers, scanners, and fax machines. To update its image and
brand, Xerox changed its name and visual identity to “The Document Company –
Xerox.” The company unveiled a new company symbol – a pixilated “X,” giving the
feeling of moving between the “paper and the electronic worlds.” [82]
Then, in June 1994, Frederick W. Smith, founder of Federal Express in 1973,
announced the new name for the overnight package delivery company was FedEx. In
renaming the company and designing the new graphical image, Landor capitalized
on the colloquial name FedEx that was simpler and had become “a household name
and even a verb.” The final graphic placed an arrow within the brand name to
symbolize “the company's speed and efficiency” that reached 187 countries daily.[83]

Walter
Landor’s approach to success was through his connections in the general
business community in the Bay Area and through connections in national
professional associations. With his quiet voice and measured discourse,
reminiscent of a college professor, Landor was convincing in his approach when he
met with clients and reporters. Even his accent, while mildly perceptible,
sounded “more European” than specifically identifiable. Through his own style
of self-promotion, and always in an understated manner, Landor usually let his
clients or the work he did for his clients speak for his success.

The Klamath’s
unique character added to his notoriety and soon made the boat a San Francisco
landmark. Landor took advantage of this and opened the Klamath for
symposia, parties, and social fundraisers. In 1965, he hosted a “gathering of
communicators” that featured Marshall McLuhan, Tom Wolfe, Herb Caen, Justin
Herman, Dr. Gerald Fagan, and S.I. Hawakawa.

Landor also
graciously provided the Klamath for ceremonies and other social
functions for his staff. The two daughters of George McLean, an associate for
over twenty years, were married on the Klamath and Alex Tellis
celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary on board.[84]
Involved with several cultural and civic organizations in San Francisco, such
as the Exploratorium, Landor used the Klamath to support their
fundraising efforts.[85] While local politicians
were often invited and attended these events, Landor prohibited the use of the Klamath for political campaigns or
functions.[86]

Some parties brought aboard the crew from the television show
“The Streets of San Francisco,” including its leading actors Carl Malden and
Michael Douglas. Another activity on board the Klamath was the annual visit by Harvard
Business School as part of an executive marketing program. Landor
opened his doors (gangplank) for the executives to take a glimpse at his
products and services. It was of course
beneficial to Landor as well since it was “a major marketing opportunity for
contacts, and the Klamath was a glamorous
location.”

The history of advertising and industrial design is incomplete without
acknowledging the contributions of Walter Landor, a pioneer who designed a wide
range of well-known graphics for packaging and labels and created brand names
and trademarks. The small company he started in San Francisco in 1941 with his
wife Josephine Martinelli, Walter Landor & Associates (later Landor Associates),
later grew to become an international corporation. His clientele
represented a variety of businesses from industries that included consumer goods,
banking and finance, and commercial aviation.

By the late 1980s,
Landor Associates had grown to twenty-one offices with branches in New York,
Chicago, and Cincinnati in the United States; Tokyo and Hong Kong in Asia;
London, Milan, and Paris in Europe. Even though it was still the largest
independent design firm, growth for the company had slowed during the late
1980s and Landor looked for possible investors. By the end of September 1989,
Young & Rubicon, a prominent advertising agency in New York City, bought
Landor Associates for a reported $50 million. Although he was no longer the
chief executive, Walter at the age of seventy-six was basking in his retirement
as he retained the title of “company founder.” He maintained an active role in
the company, both at the San Francisco headquarters and on travels with Jo, remaining
in touch with clients, their projects, and of course with old friends.[88]

Walter always claimed
that the San Francisco location was his greatest advantage, and that it allowed
him to create the most effective designs for his clients. In November 1991, he
received his crowning award in a deserving tribute to his career as the
recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Packaging Designers
Council.[89]

In 1993, Walter
Landor suffered a stroke and passed away on June 9, 1995, at his home in
suburban San Francisco with his family at his bedside.[90]
In an interview before his illness, he reminisced about his life and career: “I
didn’t know I was founding a company. I got a few jobs, and a few clients. It
just grew. It grew because it is a natural from continuity … it just happens. As
some people know, the way the international expansion occurred is from a result
of my determination to travel.”[91]

His career and achievements left a lasting legacy in the field of
advertising history and industrial design. Landor believed that the creation of a
label, a trademark, or a brand was set in motion when the graphic design
consistently identified the product to the consumer. He stressed the importance
of a brand to make a positive connection with the consumer, concluding: “A
product is made in a factory, but a brand is built in the mind.”[92]

[86] Roger Kent to Walter Landor, re:
Ron Pelosi Democratic Nominee for State Senator, San Francisco (July 6, 1972),
from the Landor Design Collection, Archives Center, Smithsonian National Museum
of American History. Also see Eileen Julian, assistant to Walter Landor, to
Roger Kent (July 10, 1972), from the Landor Design Collection, Archives Center,
Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Volume

Themes

Regions

This project is sponsored by the Transatlantic Program of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany through funds of the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.